----- Original Message ----- From: TB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: IAC-discussion <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2000 7:13 PM Subject: Re: [iac-disc.] Biological warfare over Colombia Dear Friends, Look at the NY Times article's spin on the subject covered by The Observer article Sandeep sent us. Please read carefully who are the experts and how the study results compared between the two articles, and the difference in the description of what happened in Peru - a natural outbreak - brought by planes dropping brown dust - won't make people sick....... I'm copying the link to the NY Times article and the article, and then Sandeep's original message below, for the whole picture. Terry === http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/americas/070600colombia-drugs.html July 6, 2000 Fungus Considered as a Tool to Kill Coca in Colombia By TIM GOLDEN nder pressure from the United States, Colombia has reluctantly agreed to take the first step toward developing a powerful biological herbicide against the coca and heroin-poppy fields that are spreading almost unchecked across its countryside, Colombian and United States officials said yesterday. For years, United States officials have been quietly debating ways to conduct field tests of such an herbicide, developed from a fungus that occurs naturally in many types of coca and other plants. Now, Colombian officials say they are completing a proposal to the United Nations that would include testing for the presence of the fungus, Fusarium oxysporum, in coca, the raw material of cocaine. If the fungus is found in Colombian varieties of coca, Colombian scientists would go on to evaluate its effectiveness, safety and environmental impact before deciding whether to produce the herbicide. "What we want is a program of research -- and only research -- on the use of biological controls against these crops," the Colombian environment minister, Juan Mayr, said in an interview yesterday. The Colombian government is uneasily supporting the project as President Clinton is about to sign a bill providing $1.3 billion in aid to Colombia to fight drug traffickers and the insurgents who protect their trade. Some powerful Republican in Congress told Colombian officials that they were supporting the spending on the expectation that that Colombia would agree to explore the use of Fusarium fungus in its coca fields. Within the Clinton administration, officials said, the testing of fungal herbicides was also pushed by the White House drug policy adviser, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, and by officials of the United States Southern Command, which is overseeing the American overhaul of Colombia's armed forces. Environmentalists and other activists in both countries are raising a din of objections to any field tests of the fungus, arguing that it is virtually a biological weapon -- one that might upset Colombia's ecology or endanger farmers, animals and food crops. Last year, similar complaints by environmentalists in Florida prompted state officials there to put aside plans to test a variant of Fusarium for possible use against marijuana fields. Several plant pathologists who have studied the fungus extensively said there was relatively little scientific basis for the assertions about its danger. They acknowledged that a great deal of testing still needed to be done, but they added that the most significant unanswered questions might have less to do with the safety of the fungus than with its effectiveness and cost. "If they're looking at local strains of the fungus, then I can't see something scientifically dangerous about it," said Jonathan Gressel, a professor of plant sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. "What you're doing is taking a disease that is already present and putting on more of it." "But they'll be lucky if it works," Dr. Gressel added. "Because typically this inundative strategy isn't good enough in commercial agriculture, and I'm sure the narcos have been planning ahead. They'll probably go to fungicides or breed their coca to be resistant to the fungus. It's relatively easy to do." The concerns about Fusarium's proposed use as a mycoherbicide, or fungal herbicide, have been heightened by the shadowy history of research into its impact on drug crops. Indeed, the Colombian study is being proposed after many years of often secret investigation by scientists in the United States and the former Soviet Union. Officials said Fusarium, a naturally occurring fungus with variants that can cause wilt in everything from tomatoes and grain to marijuana, was first identified as a possible weapon in the drug fight by Central Intelligence Agency scientists in the early 1980's. The United States Agriculture Department began more extensive research into the use of the fungus on coca in 1988, and it continued, mostly in secret, for nearly a decade. At roughly the same time, Soviet biological weapons scientists at the Institute of Plant Genetics in Uzbekistan were working to develop Fusarium fungus, plant bacteria and other pathogens to destroy opium poppies -- and perhaps enable Moscow to limit the world's morphine supply or undermine the opium-dependent economy of Afghanistan. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States continued to pay for research at the laboratory as part of an effort to keep its impoverished scientists from joining the biological weapons programs of countries like Iraq and Iran. Some of the same research now continues under the auspices of the United Nations Drug Control Program, with has quietly supported the use of biological controls against drug crops since 1976. In Uzbekistan, as in Colombia, much of the United Nations effort is financed by the United States. "Whatever happened in the past, the work has to be redone now in an open environment," said Eric Rosenquist, one of the officials who has worked longest on the fungus. "Only then can you debate it on its merits." "I don't see this as some horrible thing that's going to mutate and kill people -- that's science fiction," added Mr. Rosenquist, a program leader for international programs at the Agriculture Department's Research Service in Beltsville, Md. "But you have to demonstrate that it is going to be effective, and that hasn't been done yet." Mr. Rosenquist and other officials noted that a natural epidemic of Fusarium in Peru, beginning in the mid-1980's, had only a limited effect on the cultivation of coca there. The attraction of the fungus as an herbicide is that its strains have generally been found to attack only a single type of plant, entering the roots and strangling the vascular system while leaving other species untouched. The fungus can live on in the soil for many years, moving from one coca plant to another. Proponents of fungal herbicides say they may prove to be much less damaging to the environment than chemical herbicides that are now typically used to fumigate drug fields. Similar biological controls are increasingly being used to kill weeds, noted David C. Sands, a plant pathologist who has led much of the research on Fusarium's potential use against coca. "The question is whether this is considered a noxious plant," he said. Dr. Sands, a plant pathologist at Montana State University, worked almost singlehandedly to revive congressional interest in mycoherbicides after the Agriculture Department began to phase out its support for Fusarium research in 1996. He also holds a patent on what officials say would be the likely method for dispersing the fungus if it is ever used on coca or opium poppies. The design involves dropping Fusarium-coated seeds from planes flying over coca fields, at higher altitudes than the crop-dusting planes and helicopter that are routinely attacked by drug producers and guerrillas. For some years, lawyers at the White House and the State Department debated whether it was possible to use the fungal herbicide on drug crops without violating the international conventions against the spread of biological weapons. The lawyers determined that the law would not be violated if a foreign country made its own decision to use or test the fungus, but that has not satisfied all American officials. "I don't support using a product on a bunch of Colombian peasants that you wouldn't use against a bunch of rednecks growing marijuana in Kentucky," said one United States intelligence official. "And there is definitely less than unanimous support for this in Colombia." Mr. Mayr, the Colombian environment minister, said he had flatly rejected the first proposal for a mycoherbicide research plan that was sent to him in late April by the United Nations Drug Control Program. A summary of the plan stipulated that "the government of Colombia has agreed, in principle, to experimental field trials being conducted in that country." Mr. Mayr and two other senior Colombian officials said they will propose instead to test only fungal herbicides that already exist in Colombia. "If Fusarium is not there, we won't study it," he said. But they agreed to look at various types of biological controls against coca, including predatory insects. The United Nations drug control director in Bogot, Klaus Nyholm, and the assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, R. Rand Beers, suggested that they would support the new Colombian plan. "This is an idea that ought to be investigated," Mr. Beers said of the fungus's potential as a herbicide. "It should not be implemented until the science is clear. But if it is, then it should be considered a tool." === Sandeep Vaidya wrote: > US sprays poison in drugs war > > Colombia aid includes plan to target coca fields with GM herbicide > which kills other crops and threatens humans > > Ed Vulliamy in New York > Sunday July 2, 2000 > The Observer > > A torrent of potentially lethal herbicide is set to be unleashed across > great swaths of > Colombia as part of a new US aid package which was finally approved by > Congress > last week. > > A hidden and undebated condition of the $1.6 billion package - meant to > finance the > Colombian government's fight against the now overlapping forces of > guerrilla rebels > and narco-cartels - is a plan for military aircraft to spray the > country's coca-growing > areas. > > The scheme echoes the infamous defoliation of Vietnam because the plan > involves a > mycoherbicide called Fusarium EN-4. The Fusarium fungus is the root for > many of > the chemical weapons developed by the US, the Soviet Union, Britain, > Israel, France > and Iraq. > > Mycotoxicologist Jeremy Bigwood - working with a fellowship grant to > carry out > research into Fusarium derivatives used in biological warfare - told The > Observer that > the use of the fungus in Colombia would damage crops other than cocaine, > and > develop mutations that could lethally affect humans with immune > deficiencies. > > Fusarium works by infecting crops with a soil-borne mould which secretes > toxins into > their roots, which then putrefy and dissolve the plants' cells, killing > them or - worse > still - affecting the animals or humans who feed off them. During the > late 1980s, a > mystery epidemic of Fusarium suddenly attacked a coca-growing area of > Peru. > Bigwood was working as a photo-journalist and teamed up with a Latin > American > expert, Sharon Stevenson, to publish an article in the Miami Herald > detailing > extensive damage to other crops than coca in the Peruvian valley. > > Ruined peasants said they had seen helicopters spraying a brownish smoke > across > the fields, but it remains a mystery whether the Fusarium epidemic was > an > experiment by the US and Peruvian authorities, as Bigwood and Stevenson > suspected. > > Fusarium next emerged in 1999 when Colonel Jim McDonough - a former > colleague of > White House drug czar General Barry McCaffrey, now in charge of the > present > Colombian operation - was hired by Governor Jeb Bush to run the Florida > anti-drug > office. He proposed to spray the fungus's EN-4 strain on the state's > copious > marijuana crops. His adviser in the scheme was Dr David Sands, now a > professor at > the University of Montana in Bozeman, who had extracted the strain for > the US > Department of Agriculture. > > The plan was scotched when the head of Florida's Department of > Environmental > Protection, Dr David Struhs, wrote a letter to the colonel dated 6 April > 1999, saying > that the 'mutagenicity' of the fungus 'was by far the most disturbing > factor in > attempting to use a Fusarium species as a herbicide. It is difficult if > not impossible to > control the spread of the Fusarium species,' he wrote. 'The mutated > fungi can cause > disease in a large number of crops including tomatoes, peppers, flowers, > corn and > vines'. He added that the mutated genus could stay in the ground for 40 > years. > > During research for his lecture, Bigwood traced Sands to Colombia where > he was an > executive with Agricultural and Biological Control, a company which > markets the > fungus. He visited scientists to tell them about EN-4, and - according > to the same > scientists' accounts to Bigwood - instructed them not to talk to the > press. > > The government's 'fumigation' of coca-growing areas of Colombia had been > continuing > for some time on a small scale, with Indians in the high Andean villages > complaining > of nausea, rashes and stomach problems after the spray-planes had > swooped over. > They have also damaged legitimate crops, thereby undermining government > efforts to > support farmers who have renounced poppy and coca growing. > > The agent used in these cases was Glyphosate, marketed by the Monsanto > company (famous for GM foods) as 'Roundup'. Monsanto had been forced by > a court > case in New York to withdraw claims that the product was 'safe, > non-toxic and > harmless'. > > The limited spraying programme did nothing to curb the mass production > of either > cocaine or heroin. Official sources fear even if the forthcoming > programme were to > wipe out a third of the drug, that would send the price of the remaining > two-thirds > 'through the ceiling'. > > US government researchers, says Bigwood, initially insisted that the > EN-4 strain was > 'species specific', designed to attack only the Erythroxylum genus in a > coca plant. > But, he says, there are 200 other plant species within that genus which > do not > contain coca and could therefore be affected and destroyed. Even this > does not fully > define the threat to other crops because, says Bigwood, 'it mutates into > another > organism, capable of attacking another plant. The protagonists of > Fusarium can then > hide behind the fact that when it attacks something else, it has become > something > else.' > > Bigwood's greatest concern is with the potential effect not on other > crops than coca, > but on humans. Among the Colombian scientists who met with Sands was > Eduardo > Posada, president of the Colombian Centre for International Physics, who > found > Fusarium to be 'highly toxic'. His data found that that the mortality > rate among > hospital patients who were immune-deficient and in-fected by the fungus > was 76 per > cent. > > 'To apply a mycoherbicide from the air that has been associated with a > 76 per cent > kill rate of hospitalised human patients would be tantamount to > biological warfare', he > said. > > Copyright Guardian Media Group plc. 2000 > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Free Conference Calling with Firetalk! > Host your next egroup meeting live on Firetalk. > Click here! > http://click.egroups.com/1/5478/6/_/790251/_/962527027/ > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > ------------------------------------------------- > *** Iraq Action Coalition Discussion Forum *** > > http://iraqaction.org/discussion.html > ------------------------------------ > *To Post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > *To Subscribe, send a blank message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > *To Unsubscribe, send a blank message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > * To see the List Guidelines, go to: http://iraqaction.org/discussion.html > *Any questions, contact the List Moderator at [EMAIL PROTECTED] > ----------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Law.com is the preeminent online destination for legal professionals. 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